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Did I wake myself up?
Can a person do that?
Or is it the world,
always stranger than we think,
sending us small, startling thoughts?
The thoughts are shaped like benevolent gnomes
the kind you see in gardens
peering up at you
with their red or blue caps
holding a lantern or a basket of flowers.
Maybe they wait in the yards,
one or two per neighborhood
ready for the next person
who wants to wake up
and see the world fresh.

Here’s the path forward.
murky as a winter pond,
dark as that forest.

When winter is here,
brittle and dried into
a shell of ice on every stair
and all you remember is
how slippery life is–
how things you counted on
slide away fast,
how likely life is to shatter
sharp pieces flying everywhere
piercing eyes and hearts
till the world shifts
and you are traveling with the Snow Queen.

When winter is here,
listen to that other voice—
the one you pray to never stop hearing,
the voice that says
The ice that coats our hearts
is thin. Remember it only takes
one firm step
in any direction
to crack it open
and give us firm ground again.

Perkiness can only carry you so far.
No matter how often you murmur hope and candles,
fixing the world up like a carpenter
repairing an old house—
not perfect, but sound enough
to survive winter—
It’s not enough.

Sometimes the answer is
tea and solitude
watching snow fall.

Sometimes the answer is
a dinner date in a swanky joint
with someone who laughs
at the way you say swanky.

Sometimes the answer is
a pot of soup
everyone you love around a candlelit table
except they mostly hate soup
so sometimes a dinner everyone will eat
is the answer.

Sometimes the answer is
wait for spring.

Sometimes the answer is
confused. It wanders the streets
looking in every window for you,
the one who treats life like a game of hide and seek.

Sometimes the only poem worth saving
Is the list that holds back dread.

Wandering crowded streets
in a city I should know by now but don’t,
lost again. The only maps I find are wrinkled, outdated,
and written in a language I don’t speak.
There are guidebooks to study,
but they describe the contents of obscure museums
dedicated to collections from odd sciences.

I don’t understand, is a whisper
that builds to a whine just below panic
and goes on and on in my head.

How many other tourists on this street,
studying their clutched maps with such concentration
are frowning because it’s so hard to read
when the same words keep stuttering in their heads?

     In the night,the holidays folded up their tents and moved on. Snow fell while no one watched. Somewhere before dawn, it covered the tracks of the wagon wheels. Morning now. Snowing still.
     Sweep up the tinsel and pine needles. Turn away from that melancholy year. Look out the window at the snowy field spread before us. Deep and crisp and even. Even this—ready for the paths we’ll follow, and those we’ll forge.

Whether we linger, tearful and fond,
or pack its bags and hurry it out
clothes falling
from the half-closed suitcase
as we bolt the door behind it,
Tonight
is for farewells
to this year that will never come again.

Tomorrow is for resolutions
and returns to shops,
for change and promises,
for champagne and parties.

However we take our leave from each other,
weeks from now, cleaning the guest room,
we may find the old year
left a gift behind
something sweet or steely
to open in the spring.

At the grocery store
a cheerful man is
hanging paper snowflakes
from the ceiling.
Each one is coated in silver glitter
and is bigger than his head.

You can’t help but look up.
He smiles while he works, says
something funny to each of us,
the dozens of shoppers who pass by.

He stands at the top of a ladder
with all his supplies—
A ball of string, scissors, metal hangars
and a stack of snowflakes
sprinkling cheer and glitter.
By the end of his shift
he’ll shine.

Before dawn, the view
is the exact shade of old black and white movies.

Any second, a couple may walk down this street—
He’ll be tall and dark haired, in a suit and a fedora.
She’s in careful curls, wearing a dress with shoulder pads,
cinched waist and wide belt above a skirt you
know would swirl if she circled quickly enough
around and around like the seasons we pass through–
till we are all pulled into the story:
It’s winter in Bedford Falls
and no matter how we forget (over and over) again
as she twirls and seasons rush by–
this life is full of wonders.

…in her huge carriage, metal couplings and bits of horse’s harness creaking in the cold air.  The doors burst open, because even the minutes are overstuffed.  Her cart is laden with packages and glinting bits of tinsel and out in the night someone is singing a carol, soft and off-key, the way they do.  The whole day ahead is stacked high with responsibilities and gifts and the secret, delicious joy of seeing them as one woven present.